“Unbelievably exaggerated …. profoundly misguided …. nothing of substance.”

A federal judge last week excoriated a pair of Colorado attorneys for creating a sideshow in their clients’ case and asking for her to mediate a petty conflict between the men that she saw as a waste of her time.

“Interpersonal squabbles among the parties’ attorneys have no place in the court system generally, and this Court will not tolerate them in this case. None of these motions should have been filed,” wrote U.S. District Court Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello in an April 17 order. “Yet, because they were not withdrawn, the Court has had to spend its resources to address them on the merits (of which there are none).”

The underlying case between Well Master Corporation and Flowco Product Solutions involves allegations of patent infringement for oil and gas extraction technology. In early October 2023, the attorney for Well Master filed multiple supplemental authorities — court decisions in other cases that are relevant to an issue in the parties’ lawsuit.

In response, Frank C. Porada, the attorney for Flowco, claimed by email that Arguello’s courtroom rules did not allow for supplemental authority and demanded the filings be withdrawn.

“I should think that is a more preferable course than if I have to address this with the Court,” Porada wrote on Oct. 3.

Benjamin B. Lieb, representing Well Master, defended his right to file the documents. Porada replied on Oct. 5, but he received an out-of-office message from Lieb explaining Lieb was away for the Columbus Day weekend and that Porada should contact his assistant for “urgent” matters.

Instead, Porada quickly filed a motion to strike Well Master’s recent filings. Porada told Arguello he attempted to speak with Lieb, but Lieb “frustrated efforts to further confer as without notice or warning, he left his office not to return until next week.”

“Was this issue such an emergency that you could not wait one business day for me to return?!” Lieb emailed Porada on Oct. 11. “Also, your motion argues that the notices ‘increases the amount of work’ for the Court. But then you require the Court to review five pages of arguments to which we must respond and the Court will have to review all of it. I suspect that Judge Arguello will not be pleased with this.”

She was not.

The back-and-forth illustrated “the growing animosity between the parties’ attorneys and their concomitant inability to behave in a professional manner by cooperating with one another,” Arguello wrote.

On Dec. 6, Lieb filed a motion seeking sanctions on Porada. Lieb accused him of making a “false statement” — namely, that Lieb’s Columbus Day vacation “frustrated efforts” to discuss the supplemental authority.

“His assertion is false,” Lieb wrote.

To the contrary, Lieb never “notified counsel for Flowco that he would be beginning a holiday at any time before he left his office,” Porada retorted. “Further, Columbus Day is not a holiday in Colorado.”

Arguello labeled the controversy “unproductive and costly bickering,” and observed the two men “have replaced the parties as the true adversaries.”

“Neither party, however, appears to grasp the fact that this debate,” she wrote, “should not have been dumped into this Court’s lap in the first place.”

As for the merits of the lawyers’ complaints, she slammed Porada for his “flatly incorrect” insistance that submitting supplemental authority was not allowed, noting such filings “are permitted and routinely filed” in the court. At the same time, Arguello deemed the supplemental authority to have “little value,” and she preferred that Lieb “not patronize the Court with notice of orders that its law clerks are perfectly capable of uncovering themselves.”

Finally, she declined to sanction Porada, noting it was true that Lieb left his office without telling Porada first. But Porada was not blameless, as he ignited the controversy on Arguello’s docket with “needless motions” rather than show “a scintilla of professional restraint,” she wrote.

Arguello ordered the lawyers to share her ruling with their clients and “seriously consider not billing their clients for the time spent fighting over these non-meritorious issues.”

Lieb and Porada did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The case is Well Master Corporation v. Flowco Production Solutions, LLC.